SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 19, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Google Search Results Dominated By One Domain

  Is it a test? Is it a bug? Is it a permanent change to Google’s search results? No one knows, and Google hasn’t answered our questions about it yet. What’s “it”? As Malcolm Coles describes in a blog post today, Google is allowing a single domain — from a well-known brand — to dominate the […]

• Don’t Overlook Conversion Events

  In our industry, we tend to become obsessed with topics like Keywords, Demand, Ranking, Paid Campaigns, Optimization, Algorithm changes, etc. What we tend to lose sight of is the real point of search – what do people do when they get to your site? Search is simply one of many vehicles to get qualified traffic […]

• Making Sense of Facebook Places

  One of the questions that came up after the formal launch of Facebook Places last night was: how will this affect Google Places (among others)? As an aside, I have to say it’s really strange that these products have nearly the identical name. It’s almost like Honda offering a car with a particular name and […]

• Step-By-Step: Your First Keyword Report

  To really dive into the nitty gritty of your account performance, you’re going to have to generate some custom reports. That’s because while the engine dashboards provide some top level data on your reports, they’re too general and non-specific most of the time to be really useful. Today I’ll take you step-by-step through your […]

• SES SF Live Blogging Recap: Day Two

  Below is the live blog coverage of the sessions given today at the Search Engine Strategies San Francisco conference. If you are aware of other live blog coverage, feel free to link to them in the comments. […]

• Live Blogging the Facebook Places Launch

  I’m at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto where CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on stage in a jam-packed room that more resembles a wedding or luau than a press conference. He’s now announcing Facebook Places. He says Facebook Places seeks to accomplish three goals. […]

• Germans Can Opt-Out Of Google Street View

  As we mentioned last week, Google is now allowing German residents to opt-out of having buildings shown in Google Street View Germany.
  The removal request page begins by saying that it’s “a pity” that the user wants to make a building unrecognizable in Street View. Google goes on to explain that […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Changes to Best Answer time, and to the Preview page, Yahoo Answers Blog
• The Iterative Web App: New Stacked Cards Interface for Gmail on iPad, Official Google Mobile Blog
• 400 Google workers test TV at home, BostonHerald.com
• A developer preview for the Chrome Web Store, googlecode.blogspot.com
• Google Begins Charging Devs $5 To List Chrome Extensions, Themes, And Apps, TechCrunch
• New features in Google Docs and Google Sites, googlesmb.blogspot.com
• Which Chrome extensions are popular at Google?, YouTube
• Yahoo! Mail Hearts Apps, www.ymailblog.com

Business Issues

• Google Yields to German Privacy Concerns on ‘Street View’, Wall Street Journal
• Is Yahoo Embarrassed Over Bing Powering Their Results?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Music industry questions Google on piracy, thehill.com
• On six-year IPO anniversary, Google shares slip, MarketWatch
• The New Villains of New Media: Apple, Google, www.thewrap.com
• Twitter’s COO Dick Costolo Talks About Management, Monetization and IPO Cravings, AllThingsD
• Yahoo Looks to Maximize Happiness, Marketing Pilgrim

Link Building

• 54 New Link Building Resources: the SES SF Edition! 8/13-8/19, ontolo.com
• Google Webmaster Tools Link data – a case study, David Naylor
• How an Online Retailer Can Evaluate the ROI of a Link Building Campaign, Search Engine Journal
• Investing in Link Building, SEOmoz
• Link building techniques: Risk vs. reward, Conversation Marketing
• Signal Strength – Linking Speed Bumps, www.adgooroo.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• 5 Reasons Why Facebook Places Is Kind of a Big Deal, Duct Tape Marketing
• Apple Shutting Down Quattro Wireless Network On Sept. 30 To Focus Exclusively On iAd, Business Insider
• Bing, Google get split decision in Facebook Places mapping feature, www.techflash.com
• Facebook Places – Implied Consent?, distilled
• Facebook Places Launches with Bing’d Out Maps, www.bing.com
• Facebook Places Will Be Huge: Capturing Stories About Places, blogs.praized.com
• Facebook Places: What it means for media brands, emediavitals.com
• How To Disable Facebook Places, Read/Write Web
• Reviews Are Dead! Long Live Reviews – Will Facebook Places Change the Review Landscape?, Mike Blumenthal
• The Advertising Opportunity in Facebook Places, www.emarketer.com
• To 100 million and beyond with Google Maps for mobile, Official Google Mobile Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• High Level Marketing Skills For PPC, ppcblog.com
• How To Use Bing’s Dynamic Insertion, PPC Hero
• Introducing the AdWords Small Business Corner, a new forum discussion category for SMBs, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Google Russia’s Soviet Space Dog Doodle: –ë–µ–ª–∫–∞ –∏ –°—Ç—Ä–µ–ª–∫–∞, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• The impact of brand & conversion rates on SEO, BlogStorm
• 4 Things To Consider When Writing Site Content, smallbiztrends.com
• 7 Questions Small Businesses Should Be Asking, Small Business SEM
• Align your bids with your CPA using AdWords Editor and Excel, PPC Hero
• Getting To Number 1 & Staying There, Hobo
• Keep Your Articles Narrowly Focused and Keyword Centric, Michael Gray
• Off-Label Use For Google’s Image Labeler?, SEM Clubhouse
• On Branding, Blogging, and Link Ponds, Search Engine Journal
• SEO Effect Tools: First Beta with Keyword Research with New SEO KPI’s, dailyseotip.com
• Site Performance After Hosting Upgrade, seogadget.co.uk
• Yahoo! Search Now Powered by Bing Relevancy Algorithm, SEO Book

Social Media

• Why Tumblr Trumps Micro-Blogging, www.blueglass.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Off the Charts, YouTube Blog

Web Analytics

• Inside Klout: Measuring Your Online Influence, www.webanalyticsworld.net

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Attention! Before You Guest Blog, Know Their Audience – It is important before you start to guest blog, that you understand each blogs target audience and how influencial they are.  This post shows you how to research a blogs audience and readership to help you decide on which blogs to write guest posts for.
• Rand's Getting More Worried about the Effectiveness of Webspam – For a long time, if you asked me about spamming the search engines, whether with hardcore black hat tactics or merely gray hat link acquisition, I'd say that in the long run, neither was the right move. Building a great site and a great brand through hard work, white hat links, solid content and marketing strategies has always been my path of choice. It still is today, but my faith is definitely wavering.
• Google treating brand names in search terms as site: searches? – If you search for [some term] and [website name], Google's now treating it as if this is a site:[website name] search – allowing that site to completely dominate the first page of results. Seems a big shift in favour of big brands – and will also penalise affiliates, and companies reselling other services.
• Top 25 Social Media Keyword Search Tools and Engines – Want to learn what is being said in your niche or industry in real time? Check out these 25 blogging, forum, and social media search tools and engines.
• Market Research for Link Building – Who You Can Get Links From – Very comprehensive post from the SEOmoz blog about link building "due diligence".